I Would Take A Hard Answer Over None

You would take the bad news. That is the part that would sound strange to anybody you tried to explain it to.

If somebody with real standing sat you down and said, you are getting this wrong in the following four ways, you would be devastated for about a day and then you would be enormously relieved.

Because at least it would be settled. There would be something to do. There would be an end to the particular kind of tiredness that comes from carrying a question that nothing answers.

What you cannot do is this. The open version. Years of it, with the file never closing, and every good week and every bad week going into the same unresolved pile.

I am not going to give you the answer. Not to be withholding, but because I have not seen your house, and a stranger issuing a finding about your family would be worth nothing to you by the weekend.

The LORD looketh on the heart

There is a line in Samuel spoken while a prophet was getting a judgment wrong, which is the most useful context it could possibly have.

For the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

Man looketh on the outward appearance. That is said about Samuel, who was a genuine prophet, standing in front of a genuinely impressive man and drawing the wrong conclusion.

So the verse is not describing careless people. It is describing the best available human judgment, and it is saying that the best available human judgment reads the outside.

You are seen through by God rather than assessed from the outside, and that has never once depended on how the house looks from the doorway. 1 Samuel 16:7 says the LORD looketh on the heart, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a room where somebody would take a bad verdict over an open file.

And there is a mercy hidden in it that answers the specific ache you have.

The verdict you want is not available from any human being, and this verse explains why. Not because nobody cares enough to give it, but because nobody has the information required to issue it, including you.

You are not being denied a verdict, and no person alive has ever once been able to see enough to issue one. It is written in 1 Samuel 16:7 that man looketh on the outward appearance, and the Spirit of God is the one who explains the silence rather than leaving it unaccounted for.

What you would actually do with the answer

Now let me press on the thing you say you want, because I do not think it would do what you expect.

If somebody handed over the four ways, they would get worked on. That is what this kind of person does, and it is not a criticism.

And by about the fifth week there would be a new question, which is whether the work on them is being done well enough, and the file would reopen in a different shape with a shorter history and the same weight.

The relief you are imagining comes from the closing of a question. But questions of this kind do not close by being answered. They close by being taken out of your jurisdiction, and that is a different mechanism entirely.

1 Samuel 16:7 moves the seeing rather than supplying a report, and the Holy Spirit is the one who closes a file by moving it rather than by finishing it.

You are relieved of the file rather than handed the findings, and that has never once been the smaller of the two. 1 Samuel 16:7 moves the seeing to God rather than improving anybody's report, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a question out of a person's jurisdiction.

And here is the plain thing, because years of the open file have become something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about the parent sitting at that table.

It is a person who takes this seriously enough to want it settled, and that wanting is the same thing that makes them good at it.

You have not been left in the dark, and an unanswered question has never once been the same as a bad answer. The written word explains why no human being can issue the finding in 1 Samuel 16:7, and the Spirit of God is the one who declines to leave a person imagining the worst in the silence.

He looked on the heart and He said so

One more thing, and it is the part that turns this from an explanation into something you can hold.

God does not only look on the heart. In that chapter He says what He sees, out loud, through a prophet, to a family that had not even called the boy in from the field.

The looking is not silent. It produces a word. And the word came to somebody who had been left outside while everybody else was inspected.

You are not outside the room where the word gets spoken, and being overlooked by people has never once meant being overlooked by God. It is written in 1 Samuel 16:7 that the LORD looketh on the heart, and the Spirit of God is the one who sends for the person nobody thought to call in.

That is the shape of it. Not a certificate, and not silence either. A word, arriving in the middle of an ordinary day to a person who was not in the room when the assessing was happening.

1 Samuel 16:7 has a seeing that speaks, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a word to a person who has been left standing in a field.

You are seen by somebody who says what He sees, and the silence you have been living in has never once been His. 1 Samuel 16:7 has the looking on the heart followed immediately by a word spoken, and the Holy Spirit is the one who speaks into an ordinary evening rather than into a ceremony.